Universe Rushing Apart: Blue Kettle and Here We Go

Commonalities with a surrealist bent are explored in two one-acts by renowned playwright Caryl Churchill. In Blue Kettle, anxieties emerge and language is tested when a troubled man claims to be the long lost son of several different women. In Here We Go a funeral party for a man with an adventurous past forces a group of women to capture flickering moments of their own lives as they grapple with their own mortality.

Wednesday, November 7 at 7:30pmThursday, November 8 at 7:30pmFriday, November 9 at 7:30pmSaturday, November 10 at 7:30pmSunday, November 11 at 3:00pmThursday, November 15 at 7:30pmFriday, November 16 at 7:30pm (post-show talk back with the cast and director)Saturday, November 17 at 3:00pmSaturday, November 17 at 7:30pmSunday, November 18 at 3:00pm

Running Time: 100 minutes with one intermission.

Blue Kettle and Here We Go are presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH*denotes member Actor’s Equity Association

This production has received a “Standing O” from StageSource, a service organization that connects the Boston-area theatre community. Their Gender Parity Task Force awards a “Standing O” to local productions that champion the work of female, trans, gender-queer, and non-normative gender identities in order to be a catalyst for change in the Boston and New England theater communities.

Cast

Siobhan Carroll is thrilled to be making her Commonwealth Shakespeare Company debut. Boston credits include Audra in Dark Room (Bridge Repertory Theater), Margret/ Betty/ Halina in Red Velvet (O.W.I.), Irina in The Three Sisters (Apollinaire Theatre), Natalie in Next To Normal (Arts After Hours), and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (Classic Repertory Company). Siobhan received her BFA in acting from Boston University.

Maureen Keiller is happy to be be back at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, having last appeared in their production of Our American Hamlet. Theatre credits: The Honey Trap, Faithless (Boston Playwrights), Oh God (Israeli Stage), Come Back Little Sheba (Huntington Theatre Company), Into The Woods, 33 Variations, Big River, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Speech and Debate, Epic Proportions (Lyric Stage), The Whale, Nine, The Little Dog Laughed, Almost Maine, The Women (SpeakEasy Stage). Television and film: “Olive Kitteridge”, “Spotlight”, “Fever Pitch”, “My Best Friend’s Girl”, “Brotherhood”. Maureen is an Elliot Norton Award winner for Outstanding Actress and a three-time IRNE winner for Best Supporting Actress.

Karen MacDonald previously appeared as Maria in Twelfth Night, Volumnia in Coriolanus, The Countess in All’s Well That Ends Well and Gertrude in Hamlet; she also directed last season’s Old Money for CSC. Karen appeared on Broadway as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Off-Broadway as Mrs.Bumble in Oliver Twist (TFANA/A.R.T.) She was a Founding Company Member at the A.R.T., performing in 73 productions including Arkadina in The Seagull and in the title role of Mother Courage and her Children. OtherBoston area credits includes Chris in Calendar Girls (Greater Boston Theatre Company); Liz Norden in Finish Line (Boston Theatre Company); Kate Keller in All My Sons, Jean in Good People,(Huntington Theatre Company); Molly Ivins in Red Hot Patriot (Lyric Stage); Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night (New Repertory Theatre); Drowsy in The Drowsy Chaperone (Speakeasy Stage; Bernadette Spence in Home of the Brave, Solo Performer in The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead (Merrimack Rep Theatre). She also worked nationally from The Wilma Theatre to Berkeley Rep. Karen was awarded several IRNE and Eliot Norton Awards, most recently receiving the 2017 Eliot Norton for Best Performance by an Actress in Finish Line. She has received the Robert Brustein Prize for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre and the Eliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. She is a graduate of Boston University and teaches at Harvard University.

Sarah Mass is delighted to return to Commonwealth Shakespeare Company after appearing in last year’s productions of Fear and Misery in the Third Reich,Julius Caesar (Stage2), and Romeo and Juliet (Free Shakespeare on the Common).on the Boston Common. Sarah is an alumnus of both the CSC2 company and the CSC Apprentice Program. Other local credits include Mame (Greater Boston Stage), Sense and Sensibility and The Winter’s Tale (Maiden Phoenix Theatre Co), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry V (Arts After-hours), Blinders (Flat Earth Theatre), Footfalls (Exiled Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Now!). Sarah received her B.A. in Theatre from Boston College and also studied at the British American Drama Academy in London.

Creative Team

Bryn Boice is a freelance director working in Boston and New York, and is the artistic director of the Boston-based ensemble Anthem Theatre Company, now a Resident Performing Arts Company at Boston Center for the Arts. Recent area directing credits include the lauded all-female production of Julius Caesar for Actors’ Shakespeare Project (Elliot Norton Award Nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress for Marianna Bassham and Bobbie Steinbach and IRNE Award nomination for Bassham); the Boston premiere of Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti; Henry VI part II and Henry IV part I for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Apprentice Program; and Associate Artistic Director of WGBH’s A Christmas Celtic Sojourn 2017, starring Boston radio legend Brian O’Donovan. Recent work produced and directed for Anthem includes: her devised protest play, I, Snowflake; Twelfth Night of the Living Dead; Romeo VS. Juliet; and her original Irish play with song, The Merry Way. New York and regional credits as actor and/or director include work with Asolo Repertory Company, Boston Playwrights’ Theater, Theatre Row, InProximity Theatre Company, Rebellious Subjects, Monomoy Theatre, Caroline’s on Broadway, and Manhattan Theatre Club. Bryn holds an MFA in Directing from Boston University and an MFA in Acting from the Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training (FSU). She is a Lecturer at Salem State University in Voice for the Actor, Directing, and Dramatic Criticism, among others. www.brynboice.com

Caryl Churchill wrote her first play, Downstairs while she was still at university, and was first staged in 1958, winning an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge’s Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year.

She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups ‘Joint Stock’ and ‘Monstrous Regiment’. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980.

Top Girls (1982) brings together five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant given by Marlene, the new managing director of ‘Top Girls’ employment agency. The play was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, and transferred to Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994). Her plays for television include The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca’s Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her new version of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005. Her plays since then have included Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (2009), Love and Information (2012), Ding Dong the Wicked (2013), Here We Go (2015) and Escaped Alone (2016).

Cristina Todesco is pleased to work with CSC again, having previously designed Corialanus, and Twelfth Night on Boston Common. Theater companies include Actor’s Shakespeare Project, ART Institute, Company One, the Culture Project, Gloucester Stage, Huntington Theatre, Boston Playwrights, Merrimack Repertory Theater, New England Conservatory, New Repertory Theater, Olney Theater Center, Orfeo Group, Poet’s Theater, Shakespeare and Company, Speakeasy Stage Company, Harbor Stage, Summer Play Festival, Trinity Rep, Wheelock Family Theater, Williamstown Theater Festival among many more. She has designed for the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall in Boston and at Tanglewood and is a designer for Sally Taylor’s Consenses: Come to Your Senses exhibit currently showing at Mass MOCA. For Outstanding Design, she is the recipient of four Eliot Norton Awards and an IRNE. She earned a BFA in painting from Boston University’s School of Visual Arts, and an MFA in scenic design from BU’s School of Theatre Arts, where she currently teaches.

Nancy Leary returns to CSC. She is a Costume Designer who’s visionary work for opera and theater has spanned several decades and graced various stages in both the United States and Canada. From 2000 to the present Nancy has worked on operas including several new pieces for Boston Lyric Opera, Virginia Opera, The Pittsburgh Symphony, Opera Saratoga, Chautauqua Opera, Mobile Opera, Juilliard Opera, Opera Boston, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory and Boston Musica Viva. Theatre credits include Weston Playhouse, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Actor’s Shakespeare Project, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, New Repertory Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Chamber Repertory Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre and Knife Edge Productions, New York. Upcoming productions include two new operas The Long Walk for Utah Opera, Burke and Hare for Boston Lyric Opera, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa for Mannes Opera, New York. Nancy is also an Assistant Professor of Production and Design for Boston University School of Theatre.

Jen Rock is thrilled to be joining CSC again after designing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2016. Other design credits include productions ranging everywhere from Off-Broadway to academia, including work with Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Bated Breath Theatre Company, Company One Theatre, Crossroads Repertory Theatre, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Speakeasy Stage, The Brown University/ Trinity Rep Consortium, The University of Rhode Island. Additionally Jen serves on the faculty of Eastern Connecticut State University as a professor of lighting design and is the recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards. www.jenrockdesign.com.

Dewey Dellay is happy to be part of CSC again after working on Blue Kettle and Here We Go here, which was included in The Boston Globes Top Ten. Some other of his recent shows have been The Bakelite Masterpiece, Ideation, Thurgood (New Rep); Anna Christie and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Lyric Stage Company); and Constellations (Underground Railway Theater) which won an Elliot Norton award. In past years he has received an Elliot Norton award for Outstanding Design and an IRNE for Best Sound Design. His television credits include original music for Emmy nominated National Geographic’s China’s Mystery Mummies, Discovery Channel’s Miami Jail, and he was the composer for five seasons of the show Our America with Lisa Ling for the OWN Channel. He presently is contributing music to This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN, and composing music for digital children’s books produced by Live Oak Media.

Sally Tomasetti is pleased to return to CSC having recently worked on Birdy, Universe Rushing Apart and Birdy. A freelance set and props designer working with Next Generation Theatre Company, Boston Improv, Walpole Children’s Theatre, Uncommon Theatre Company and Needham Explorations. Sally is an artist that specializes in portraits and liturgical art. Each spring and summer Sally’s joy is to teach Theatre and Set design classes, educating the next generation in the wonders of backstage theater.

Jenna Worden is delighted to return to CSC after working on Universe Rushing Apart, Richard III,Old Money, Death and the Maiden, and Our American Hamlet. She has worked extensively with Gloucester Stage Company, both as a stage manager and props master. Favorite GSC credits include The Agitators, To Kill a Mockingbird,The Totalitarians, and The Flick. In addition, Jenna has worked with WGBH (A Christmas Celtic Sojourn), Phoenix Theatre, and Childsplay AZ. She earned both her BA in Theatre Studies and BSEd in History from Northern Arizona University.Proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Kristen Mazzocchi is an experienced arts educator, director and production manager. After graduating from Boston College with a BA in Theatre and Economics, she began her career at The Wang Center for the Performing Arts (now the Boch Center) as an Associate in the Arts Education Department. She went on to work as Production Manager for the Celebrity Series of Boston where she also served as Operations Director of AileyCamp Boston, a summer dance camp for 80 middle school aged students from the Boston Public School system. Kristen’s passion for education inspired her to earn a master’s degree in Arts Education from Harvard University, and then to take a position as the Director of Educational programs for The Celebrity Series of Boston. Kristen is currently a freelance teaching artist, director and production manager working with many schools and arts organizations including New England Conservatory of Music, Improv Asylum, Needham Public Schools and Next Generation Theatre Company. She also serves as Chair of the Needham Cultural Council.

Rachel Corning returns to CSC after most recently assistant stage managing this season’s Birdy and Universe Rushing Apart: Blue Kettle/Here We Go. Over her past three seasons with the company, Rachel has also assistant stage managed productions of Old Money, Death and the Maiden, Beckett in Brief, and Our American Hamlet. In the position of stage manager, Rachel has worked on the CSC Apprentice Program productions of Henry VI Pt. II and Henry IV, as well as last year’s CSC2 production of Macbeth. Throughout the past year outside of CSC, she has contributed to productions at North Shore Music Theatre (A Christmas Carol, Jekyll and Hyde) and Gloucester Stage Company (The Agitators). Rachel is a graduate of Simmons University (Boston, MA) with a degree in Media Arts.

Courtney Plati is an SDC Associate director, actor, and educator currently working in the Boston area. She is a recent graduate from Salem State University where she found her passion for directing while receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in performance. She is the recipient of the SDC Directing Initiative Award for Region 1 from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival 2018. This award afforded her the opportunity to attended the national festival as well as the opportunity to return to the Kennedy Center this past summer to attend their MFA Directing and Playwriting Intensive focusing on new works. Courtney is a former apprentice with CSC and has been in the CSC family since she was 17. She wishes to thank CSC and Bryn Boice for their continued support of her as an artist.

Driving Directions to Babson College/Sorenson Center for the Arts

From the east: Take the Massachusetts Turnpike to Exit 15 (Interstate 95/Route 128). After the tolls, follow signs to Route 95/128 South to Exit 21 (Route 16 Newton/Wellesley) …

From the west: Take the Massachusetts Turnpike to Exit 14 (Interstate 95/Route 128). After the tolls, follow signs to Route 95/128 South to Exit 21 (Route 16 Newton/Wellesley) … From the south: Follow Route 95/128 North to Exit 21 (Route 16 Newton/Wellesley) …

Then … At end of the off ramp, follow signs for Route 16 West (Washington Street). Continue on Route 16 West for 2 miles through Newton Lower Falls and Wellesley Hills. Turn left onto Forest Street and follow for 1 mile to Babson College; the main entrance is on the right. Turn left onto Map Hill Drive and park in the Trim Parking Lot. The theater is a short walk away, on College Drive.

Trim Parking Lot is the best place to park when attending events at the Sorenson Center for the Arts.As you enter on Forest Street, make a left at the first stop sign unto Map Hill Drive.On your right will be a smaller lot, Hollister Lot. If there is space available, patrons may park there.However, Trim Parking Lot is preferred which will be on the left hand side after you pass the Hollister lot.To walk to the theater, walk back towards the stop sign and make a left at the Hollister building.Continue walking straight past Reynolds Campus Center and the Sorenson Center for the Arts will be the next building.

Handicap parking is available in the Hollister Lot, on Map Hill Drive.We also recommend that patrons with mobility issues be dropped off in front of the theater before your party finds parking in Hollister or Trim lot for your convenience.

From the Amtrak Terminal at South Station

You have two options:

1) Take the Framingham/Worcester Commuter rail to Wellesley Hills. From South Station, take the Framingham/Worcester commuter rail to Wellesley Hills. Depending on the time of day, regularly scheduled trains leave South Station at ½ to 2-hour intervals (Monday-Friday), and 1-to 3-hour intervals (Saturday and Sunday). The trip takes approximately 30 minutes. Purchase your ticket in the station. Then, call a taxi from Wellesley Hills. (See Area Taxis, below.)

2) Take the “T.” From South Station, take the MBTA subway Red Line inbound two stops to Park Street. Walk upstairs and take the Green Line outbound Riverside D train to Woodland, the next to last stop on the D line. Allow an hour for the trip. Then, take a taxi from Woodland to Babson. (See Area Taxis, below.)

By Taxi

Reviews

A mortal chill runs through “Here We Go,’’ a spare and haunting drama about the end of life. And the journey to the grave is no picnic, either, given how susceptible we are to the kind of bad… Read More

Special Talk Back Friday, November 16, following the performance
Hear more from the director and cast about the process of bringing Caryl Churchill’s vision and words to life on stage with a predominately female cast and artistic team.

This production has received a “Standing O” from StageSource, a service organization that connects the Boston-area theatre community. Their Gender Parity Task Force awards a “Standing O” to local productions that champion the work of female, trans, gender-queer, and non-normative gender identities in order to be a catalyst for change in the Boston and New England theater communities.

Photo Gallery

Videos

Blue Kettle and Here We Go is recommended for ages 14 and up. The show contains themes of death and younger audiences may find the non-naturalistic writing and dialogue challenging. Parents know your child’s sensibilities and maturity best. If you have specific concerns about content, please contact the box office at 781-239-5880.

Trim Parking Lot is the best place to park when attending events at the Sorenson Center for the Arts. As you enter on Forest Street, make a left at the first stop sign unto Map Hill Drive. On your right will be a smaller lot, Hollister Lot. If there is space available, patrons may park there. However, Trim Parking Lot is preferred which will be on the left hand side after you pass the Hollister lot. To walk to the theater, walk back towards the stop sign and make a left at the Hollister building. Continue walking straight past Reynolds Campus Center and the Sorenson Center for the Arts will be the next building.

Audience and actor safety is our main concern. In cases of heavy snow or extreme weather, we will cancel and try to re-seat patrons into an alternative performance date. Weather updates can be found on the homepage of our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

To reschedule, call the box office at the Sorenson Center for the Arts at 781-239-5880 at least one business day before your reservation. We will make our best efforts to seat you in another performance. Seating will be based on availability. It is not our policy to refund tickets but we are happy to reseat you on another date. If you miss a production altogether, we will reseat you in an alternative production of your choice based on availability.